For people seeking work or an escape to a better life in the United States, it's going to cost about two times the current amount, following a move by the Trump administration to hike fees on various immigration applications.
Michelle Mendez, director of defending vulnerable programs at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), calls the move an assault on immigration.
"This rule, these fees that have increased will make it extremely difficult for individuals to become legal immigrants, specifically to become naturalized immigrants, to become citizens," Mendez told Cheddar.
The new fees, which are set to be increased in October, will also gravely impact the world's most at-risk populations seeking asylum in the U.S., Mendez added.
"$50 may seem to be a small fee for many of us. We have to understand that asylum seekers leave their countries, they flee their countries with practically nothing," she said.
While news of the increased fees may be looked on as damning, Mendez said the move is on par with the Trump administration's previous moves to eliminate "access to the legal immigration process."
"During the [presidential] campaign, the rhetoric was very much focused on illegal immigration. We knew that that actually meant they were going to attack illegal and legal immigration," she said.
For Mendez, the idea of increasing fees and making the process even more difficult for people who want to become American is a jab at the foundation upon which the country was built.
"When we limit the opportunity for people to be engaged in the process by being citizens, that really undermines our democracy. That really undermines our democratic process," she stated.
John Quelch, Dean of Miami Herbert Business School, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says the retail giant is acting in accordance to President Biden's new law banning goods from China's Xinjiang region. Quelch also elaborates on the importance of China in Walmart's overall strategy.
Cheddar's Chloe Aiello has our cannabis year-in-review, breaking down how several states legalized adult recreational use and greenlit medicinal use in 2021. She noted that while a cannabis legalization and decriminalization bill was introduced in Congress this year, potential FDA involvement in the industry, as well as a 25 percent excise tax, killed any chance the bill had of moving forward. Aiello also speculated that some form of cannabis reform could be rolled out in 2022, as the midterm elections draw closer.
Jim Worden, Chief Investment Officer at Wealth Consulting Group, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says the period between Christmas and New Year's is difficult to predict due to a lack of institutional volume, with the Omicron variant adding even more uncertainty on Wall Street.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
